This is how Washington works. Bureaucrats are hard-wired to believe they haven’t screwed up. They turn to coworkers and office pals to reinforce their belief. The FVAP version of this delusion is to tell Americans that the voting success rate really isn’t a success rate, and that Voting Assistance Officers (VAOs) spread around the world will carry the load.

I’ve spoken with numerous active VAOs, and they describe a system that doesn’t work. One officer in Kuwait shared with me the story of how he couldn’t get his CO’s approval to attend the required VAO training at the American embassy in Kuwait. Yet another described for me the thick clunky FVAP book with voting guidelines for every state and territory they must lug around. Still another VAO described the lavish world travel enjoyed by a former FVAP director, who was greeted by a car at airstrips around the globe and whisked off to receptions of fresh cut fruit, liquor, and shrimp cocktail. Nice work, if you can get it.

In the face of these failures, FVAP has announced that Twitter and Facebook are an answer:

We use social media. We use Twitter. We use Facebook, especially so that we can reach out to the largest military population, which is those 18- to 24- to 25-year-olds. We have a mobile website we just unveiled last week so that using a smartphone or a tablet from anywhere you may be, you can obtain access to our information and our tools.

There’s only one problem: only 45 percent of FVAP’s Twitter followers are active, or even real, according to statuspeople.com:

A small percentage of the 36,018 @FVAP followers appear to have any relationship to the military.

Consider two followers of FVAP’s social media campaign. “Grrrrrrr” loves “to party” and is part of #teamBiSexual. FVAP follower Cool Gadgets provides a helpful link to www.sextoysonline.se and randomly notes in his Twitter profile — “dildos”:

FVAP can always rely on Twitter follower Cristian Ortega to get DOD’s messages to the troops. Ortega notes he is “twelf [sic] years old and I love @lmfao and my idols are @redfoo and @skynuts”:

If Ortega doen’t deliver the goods, FVAP can turn to others like PornSplice, Nazi Abisabb, or Bangkok Wing Chun. The latter offers “professional private instruction in Wing Chun, Yoga, and Quigong” (not to be confused with those good old Dance Hall Days):

Others like “Dreemstars” may be monitoring FVAP for reasons which have nothing to do with military voting rights.

30 Comments, 20 Threads

1.
jimd8235

For 22 years of active duty service, a unit officer was appointed as the Voting Officer. Usually, the newbie Butter Bar…. He had to answer to a commanding officer–that had input to his report card. This isn’t hard and we don’t need a $100M office to make it happen. We need a leader in the Pentagon who isn’t wasting his time calling preachers in Florida. Hold the chain of command responsible. It is their job! If they are unable to do their job, then ya just have to let ‘em go…..Dempsey needs to go!

That’s one dead nail, jimd – you hit it squarely on the head. As one of those ‘newbie butter bars’ that was the unit voting officer, it was made very clear to me by my commander that the duty was equal in importance to my primary duty. Party affiliation mattered not – everyone was to be contacted and assisted as required. I enjoyed the job and continued to volunteer to do it until told that I needed to give more junior officers the opportunity to excel.

Your closing statement is also spot on. Leadership starts at the top, and until we get non-political officers in senior command positions I’m afraid those days I knew about 20 years ago are to be just a fond memory.

You are absolutely correct. I was a Squadron Commander in the AF….we were measured on everything. If the Squadron Commander put an emphasis on the voting access and rights, then his/her team heeded it. Everyone’s job and ‘report cards’ depended on the metrics. So to me, there is a easy fix….do it like the CFC – have positive contact between the Voting Assistance action officer (or NCO) be an officially measured item for the Commander. You can’t force them to vote, but you can measure whether or not they’ve been contacted about what they have available to them to vote. You could even measure follow-up contacts.

This would save a lot of money – you wouldn’t need the FVAP head guy flying around to receptions. You would hold the commanders responsible and discipline as necessary…..

I can also attest to what’s been written on this thread. Eight years in the USAF during the ’80s. Every unit had a contact person for voting assistance (junior officer in large units, senior NCO in smaller units). I always got the help I needed to get an absentee ballot or register in the county where I was stationed.

Leave it to the government to take something simple and make it impossibly complicated.

I have just one problem with this article, sir: Your description of the deliberate mass suppression of military voters in every single election since 1996 as “a mistake”. There’s nothing “mistaken” about it. Military voters tend to be Conservatives. The very last thing the Dhimmiecrats want is a large bloc of Conservative voters who actually know what’s going on in the Middle East to have any voice at all.

Panetta runs the Pentagon. I am not surprised at the inaction. What is the state of Romney’s sut against Wisconsin? Does he have a chance of winning it? (This could/should also be an issue in Oh, Iowa, Pa, and Colo)

That slimeball Panetta has been saying one thing while doing the opposite his whole scummy, corrupt career.
The perfect Defense Secretary for Ostupidhead.
He can’t do anything because he “lacks funding”, yet jets home every weekend, in a private jet, on your dime. I’m so glad the military is cutting back and going green, aren’t you? Remember that when you’re freezing in the dark this winter.
Typical Lying Commie skunk.

I offer a minor correction. Even though the Chinese internal energy arts can be spelled multiple ways, i.e. “qigong” or “chi kung”, I have never seen it spelled as above, “quigong”. The Twitter marketer used “qigong”.

obama’s disenfranchisement of military voters is still running full speed ahead. I’m sure libs will say it’s not that many votes but if their vote isn’t counted, how do they know how many “non-votes” this represents. I’m sure they will release a report……..

If it’s no big deal because it’s only a few votes, then I guess it’s no big deal if a few Democrats can’t get photo IDs in order to be able to vote in time for election day. After all, if it’s good enough for the military, who sheds sweat and blood for our sake, it’s good enough for city-dwellers who don’t.

FEW should have any doubt left, as to the intentions of the Radical-in-Chief and his Racialist AG.

When they are not busy stirring up racial divisions, they work towards labeling – one way or another – right wing patriots as terror threats.

On the other hand, when military personnel are gunned down by Islamists serving in the military – and out of uniform too – the lawbreaking duo can’t bring to bear ANY proper outrage. Moreover, when the Black Panthers are caught inciting to murder ‘whitey’, as well as committing menacing acts against voters, if they do not vote for the Thug-in-Chief, the AG is mute. The list/indictment goes on.

So, the fact that military personnel are getting the shaft via voting, is of piece with their anti-American game plans.

My Senator form Texas, Sen. John “Strongly Worded Letter” Cornyn wrote the Move Act and he is very proud of it. Pats himself on the back every chance he gets. However, if you call his office and ask what,if anything, he is doing to defend his legislation or the votes of the military, all you get is the ” I wrote a strongly worded…”
Sen. Cornyn has both written and passed more than one law that places more power in Holder’s hands. I don’t know if Sen Cornyn hopes to one day be the head of the DOJ or if he is too busy spouting off as head of the Republican Senatorial Committee. What he should be planning is his reelection considering that he will most certainly be primaried.

Yet, Cornyn approved Holder. Even though he knew he had a soft spot for terrorists. John Cornyn has lost credibility. He should have known with Holder’s past, what would happen. He did it, I assume because the big, bad, media monsters, would come and get him.

It seems that the Justice Dept, and current administration are more concerned in letting non-documented, unidentified individuals to vote over us military members who have sacrificed so much for our country.

One main reason many military members tend to be more conservative is simply this:
If your decisions and work directly affect life and death for you and those around you, you go with what works, not some academic “pie in the sky” B.S.

On the other hand, from this bunch who is on record for calling the Constitution “some old fogies’ super-annuated piece of paper”, or words to this effect, who has aided and abetted voter fraud under the pretext of “voter-empowerment” (voter ID laws negated or suppressed), what else did we expect?

If Romney/Ryan do win by a slim margin, it will in fact have been more like a land-slide, only nobody will know how much. — These Admin. people are crooks, from the top down. Thanks for standing up to them, calling things as you see them!

They don’t want ordinary citizens to show pix ID, but the men & women who are putting their lives on the line for this country & all of us, they don’t deserve a vote?
What is the matter with the generals? Why don’t they grow a pair & refuse to send their men/women out until they get their ballots?
I’d do it!

of course, all the way through, the msm cheering section must be pushing the same lies, or not reporting it at all. you also need the dense/simple minded (like most of hollywood) to follow along like sheeple.

some recent examples:

1. fast & furious
2. voters are hurt by having to have i.d. (this one is so stoopid i still get a laugh out of it) too bad they all aren’t funny.
3. libyan debacle
4. shameful behavior in trying to screw up military voting

this appears to be the limits of their playbook. of course, common crimes like fraud, cheating, and destroying evidence are notes in the margins on each page. makes one wonder what other stoopid sinister slimy stuff lies ahead for us.

I can’t say if my voting process was at all normal, but I am exactly who this article is talking about. US Servicemember stationed overseas in hostile remote location.

I can only speak anecdotally but the voter assistance program here worked just fine for me, and for the few who I know have also voted. We didn’t have any kind of ‘office’ set up. An officer within the battalion was named voter assistance rep and was tasked with putting the word out.

Honestly I didn’t even need their help, just the website. FVAP.GOV. I applied for my ballot with home of record, and in a few days they e mailed it to me. I printed it out and mailed it back. All in all it was very easy.

Nope. On the day I wrote the article, large means million. Couldn’t be otherwise becuase you can’t use thousand and large in the same line when talking about the feds. But I am always amazed at the nits picked.

26 year Marine here, yes there is a voting assistance officer but that alone does not ensure your absentee ballot is being counted. They are sent in bulk normally to the appropriate state ballot office but there is no evidence the ballots are not simply shredded. I am in favor of electronic voting for military personnel, on base, on election day. (This would also increase participation, something we should all wish to increase) It isn’t as though the technology does not exist, the issue is, along with positive ID electronic voting would reduce the possibility of fraud. Commanders could ensure every member had the opportunity to vote regardless of shift or duty station. Military members have no issues with presenting photo ID to vote so fraud on military bases would be non-existent. Dependents also have ID. I will call on Romney’s administration to fix this. Let the military lead by example.

It passeth all understanding that with all the stuff you read about in the above blog responses, that there are so many ordinary whites who swallow the Obama line Hook Line and Sinker and abett the destruction of our country.